Chapter 1 - Page 2

many years.
I steered for him a good many months--as was the humble duty of the
pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under
the severe superintendence and correction of the master. He was a
prime chess player and an idolater of Shakespeare. He would play
chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity
something to do that. Also--quite uninvited--he would read
Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was
his watch, and I was steering. He read well, but not profitably
for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text.
That broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up--to that
degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of
river an ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which
observations were Shakespeare's and which were Ealer's. For
instance:

What man dare, _I_ dare!

Approach thou WHAT are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of
an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off!
rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the THERE she goes!
meet her, meet her! didn't you KNOW she'd smell the reef if you
crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my
firm nerves she'll be in the WOODS the first you know! stop the
starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard! .
. . NOW then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard;
straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and
dare me to the desert damnation can't you keep away from that
greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded!
with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay in the leads!--no,
only the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby
of a girl. Hence horrible shadow! eight bells--that watchman's
asleep again, I reckon, go down and call Brown yourself, unreal
mockery, hence!"

He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy
and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since
been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid
it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with
their irrelevant "What in hell are you up to NOW! pull her down!
more! MORE!--there now, steady as you go," and the other
disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his
mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them as plainly as
I did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years ago. I never
regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed they were a
detriment to me.

His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that
detail he was a good reader, I can say that much for him. He did
not use the book, and did not